22
Nov
Kindle Fire: Should You Buy?
- After hearing all the hype—and the pricetag—I decided to buy a Kindle Fire for myself. Here are selected reviews (from critics and regular people, along with my comments) that I hope give a pretty good picture of whether the Fire is worth your money.
- First, from the critics:
- From The New York Times:
Most problematic, though, the Fire does not have anything like the polish or speed of an iPad. You feel that $200 price tag with every swipe of your finger. Animations are sluggish and jerky — even the page turns that you’d think would be the pride of the Kindle team. Taps sometimes don’t register. There are no progress or “wait” indicators, so you frequently don’t know if the machine has even registered your touch commands. The momentum of the animations hasn’t been calculated right, so the whole thing feels ornery. - — I have to agree with David Pogue here. The Fire isn’t as polished as the iPad. But while animations can be slow and taps sometimes don’t register, most people won’t be bothered too much by it. (And I’m sure a software update to fix the glitches is on its way.)
- The Fire Aside, Amazon’s Lower-Priced Kindles Also Shine
All of a sudden, the e-book companies are flooding the market with new models simultaneously. You’d think some major gift-buying season w… - Engadget:
When stacked up against other popular tablets, the Fire can’t compete. Its performance is a occasionally sluggish, its interface often clunky, its storage too slight, its functionality a bit restricted and its 7-inch screen too limiting if you were hoping to convert all your paper magazine subscriptions into the digital ones. Other, bigger tablets do it better — usually at two or three times the cost.
So, the Kindle Fire is great value and perhaps the best, tightest integration of digital content acquisition into a mobile device that we’ve yet seen. Instead of having a standalone shopping app the entire tablet is a store — a 7-inch window sold at a cut-rate price through which users can look onto a sea of premium content. It isn’t a perfect experience, but if nothing else it’s a promising look into the future of retail commerce.
- Amazon Kindle Fire review
Sure, there are plenty of other 7-inch tablets out there, but at $200 it’s hard to find a direct comparison. The best of the moment seems… - — This is a great video review of the Fire. If you’re contemplating a purchase, I suggest you watch this video.
- Kindle Fire review
The design of the Kindle Fire is anything but inspired. It would be one thing if the device were simply a black rectangle with a high glo… - Wired:
WIRED A great platform for casual video playback. A perfectly fine Android 2.3 app device. A price that pleads “buy me,” repeatedly, until you crack a big grin, and give in like a good-natured father buying trinkets for the kids at Wal-Mart.
TIRED Small screen size and insufficient processing power. Crap browser performance. Near useless as a magazine reader, and roundly trumped by superb e-ink Kindles as a book reader.
- — “Near useless as a magazine reader?” A weird comment considering Wired has an app for its magazine, which I’ve been reading on the Kindle. Looked pretty good to me, but maybe I should reconsider.
- Is This Really the Tablet Everyone’s Talking About?
When all those people who pre-ordered the Kindle Fire receive their tablets in the mail this week, they will rip open their new toy’s bes… - The Chicago Sun-Times:
The Fire is a marvelous device. And Apple and Amazon couldn’t have created a more complementary pair of tablets if they’d colluded on it. Want a tablet that does everything, and which does books exceptionally well? Buy an iPad. Want something more compact, and you’re not terribly interested in much more than content consumption? The Fire is aces. I feel as if every potential tablet consumer will recognize themselves in one of those two descriptions. - — This review pretty much sums it up. The Fire fits most people’s purpose, which is consuming content.
- REVIEW: Kindle Fire is no iPad killer - but it is a killer device - Chicago Sun-TimesBy ANDY IHNATKO ai@andyi.com November 13, 2011 11:48PM The Kindle Fire is shown at a news conference, Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2011 in New Yo…
- Cnet:
The good: The Kindle Fire is a 7-inch tablet that links seamlessly with Amazon’s impressive collection of digital music, video, magazine and book services in one easy-to-use package. It boasts a great Web browser, and its curated Android app store includes most of the big must-have apps (such as Netflix, Pandora, and Hulu). The Fire has an ultra-affordable price tag, and the screen quality is exceptional for the price.
The bad: The budget price means no premium features (3G wireless, cameras, microphone, GPS, and location services are absent), but the biggest issues are its paltry storage (only 8GB of storage–with no expansion slot), lack of Bluetooth, and dearth of parental controls. Screen brightness could be better, and the app selection doesn’t match Apple’s or Google’s (at least for now). Also, you’ll need an Amazon Prime subscription to take advantage of some of the more-unique features.
- Amazon Kindle Fire
Editors’ note (November 16, 2011): After further testing (and comparison to the Nook Tablet), we have adjusted the Features subrating fro… - From MSNBC.com:
So while we’re on the subject of iPad, let’s have the talk. No, the Kindle Fire is not anywhere close to being the precision machine that the iPad 2 is. There are no cameras and no microphone. The Fire’s screen is half the size of the iPad’s, and the Fire’s battery life isn’t as good, yet the Fire is still a hair thicker. The Fire interface, while seductively simple, lacks the nuances — the futuristic animations and fades — that keep Apple on top.
But for Apple, this still spells trouble. The Kindle Fire can handle about 80 percent of what I want to do on an iPad, for 40 percent of the price. And much of what’s missing won’t be missing for long. Even if you can justify buying one iPad, you may look to the Fire as a second device in your high-tech home. And if you can’t justify an iPad this holiday season, you might consider Amazon’s alternative.
- Technolog - Kindle Fire review: Yes, it’s that good
For $199, it’s hard to find anything we didn’t like about the Amazon Kindle Fire. Msnbc.com’s Wilson Rothman explains how it works. This … - And what everyone else thinks:
- Kindle Fire is absolute perfection and I can’t put it down. #everyonegogetone
- — I don’t know about “absolute perfection.” I have found that it’s hard to put down. It’s really portable, the size of a small book, and fits easily into my hand.
- — Haha. I love this comment. Guess Adam really likes his Fire.
- — Interesting to see Steve Jobs biography on the Fire. I’m sure he’d prefer to see his face on an iPad instead.
- I just saw my friend post how her boss gave her a kindle fire…..i hate my life.
- — The Kindle is tiny compared to the iPad. A 7-inch screen vs. a 10-inch screen might not sound like a big difference, but it’s actually a pretty big one.
- The Verdict: 4 out of 5 stars
For those of you like me, who want to watch movies and TV shows, surf the web, play a game or two, and read the occasional book or magazine, the Kindle Fire is all you need. Or, you can spend an extra $300 at minimum for a more polished tablet with a bigger screen. Personally, I’m glad I went with the Kindle Fire. It has the features I want with the price I’m willing to pay.
— Israel Perez
@israelnperez
